17 ms·

Go's New Brand

351 points by andybons 8y ago

thanatos_dem 8y ago
I know folks love the gopher, but I’m a fan of this to be honest. The hand drawn gopher just looked... childish? It definitely didn’t give me the impression of an efficient and well put together programming language.
- misterbowfinger 8y ago
  yeah neither does a cockroach for a database.
  - thanatos_dem 8y ago
    Yeah, but CRDB’s logo is pretty stylized and simple/clean. The hand drawn style for the gopher just didn’t work for a lot of applications. It was too detailed to use as an icon, and the lines were too thin to look good when printed.
- catach 8y ago
  The gopher isn't going away, though. The last pages of the brand book pdf give guidance on how to use it.
- Groxx 8y ago
  The gopher's in the brand book. Doesn't appear to be going anywhere.
- bitwize 8y ago
  The Go gopher is a redraw of Glenda, the Plan 9 bunny. Many of Plan 9's principals worked on Go, which is itself an update of Alef, Plan 9's planned systems language, before it was canned and replaced with C. I'm sure he'll still be around as a mascot. He's still on the site's main page. I really don't see the problem with him -- most commercial internet servers run a kernel with a cute penguin mascot, and many of the rest run a kernel with a cute mascot who is literally the Devil -- but I can appreciate the strategy of opening with a punchy, barebones logotype.
  - cschmidt 8y ago
    Interesting, I didn't know that https://9p.io/plan9/glenda.html https://9p.io/plan9/glenda.html
  - bitmapbrother 8y ago
    Was it really a redraw of the Plan 9 bunny? According to the Go website it says the gopher was created for a radio station fund raiser. About 15 years ago—long before the Go project—the gopher first appeared as a promotion for the WFMU radio station in New Jersey. Renee French was commissioned to design a T-shirt for an annual fundraiser and out came the gopher.
    - bitwize 8y ago
      Guess who also designed Glenda.
      - bitmapbrother 8y ago
        French, of course. The Gopher, however, is not a "redraw" of the rabbit.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    You forgot Inferno and Limbo.
- lillesvin 8y ago
  It's probably silly but I like it when logos/mascots are like that—you know, slightly helpless and not oozing of focused branding efforts. It makes me feel more certain that the language/technology is used because of its actual merits rather than its branding.
VohuMana 8y ago
Sleek new logo makes it look like a bicycle renting start up. While I think its good to refresh branding and aim to unify more things, I will miss the Go Gopher.
- jerf 8y ago
  I'm sure it's head will poke up here and there.
- venning 8y ago
  The gopher didn't go away. You can find it on pages 21 & 22 of the new Brand Book: https://storage.googleapis.com/golang-assets/go-brand-book-v1.0.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/golang-assets/go-brand-book-v...
  - VohuMana 8y ago
    Nice! In that case I am all on board with the new logo
- electricslpnsld 8y ago
  Renee French, the original illustrator of the Go Gopher, is still updating the gopher: http://reneefrench.blogspot.com http://reneefrench.blogspot.com I'm partial to this take on the little fella: http://reneefrench.blogspot.com/2016/11/blog-post.html http://reneefrench.blogspot.com/2016/11/blog-post.html
  - VohuMana 8y ago
    That is amazing! I love it :D
  - crispinb 8y ago
    Creepy (the fuzzy gopher-dalek, not you)
kenhwang 8y ago
Well this certainly looks very corporate and professional now. I suppose that fits their targeted audience better.
- philip1209 8y ago
  It also makes developers vouching for Go seem more credible.
  - leshow 8y ago
    Do we really have to suck the fun out of everything in order to look 'credible'?
    - virtuabhi 8y ago
      Well, look at comments on any submission related to CockroachDB
    - kenhwang 8y ago
      Fun was probably getting in Go's way in becoming the next Java.
      - leshow 8y ago
        IMO Go is in Go's way if becoming the next Java.
philip1209 8y ago
A few more details on the design agency's site: http://within.us/google-go/ http://within.us/google-go/
- cschmidt 8y ago
  The phone mockup is weird. Can you even install Go on a phone?
  - bitmapbrother 8y ago
    You can certainly create Go based mobile applications on iOS and Android.
  - dsl 8y ago
    I lost it at the Go business cards...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jxub 8y ago
The rebranding might make the language look sleeker and more enterprisey but it looks that they're rejecting their spirit of playfulness in order to appeal to the likes of Oracle clients and take away more Java mindshare.
- woolvalley 8y ago
  TBH I've always thought of Go as Google's Java. With some decisions to make developing at super-big-co even nicer, which helps you at google scale.
  - amelius 8y ago
    I always thought of Go as Google's Erlang.
    - jupp0r 8y ago
      I think this gets too many downvotes. Yes, static vs dynamic typing. Yes, imperative vs functional language. On the other hand, CSP is conceptually fairly close to the Actor Model, so there are definitely similarities. I've written go code that looks similar to Erlang (a go routine receiving messages from an `interface{}` channel in a for loop and then dispatching based on the type.
      - zzzcpan 8y ago
        Conceptually they are worlds apart. Supervision trees are even impossible in idiomatic Go.
        jupp0r 8y ago
        Supervision trees have nothing to do with Actors or CSP. I can recommend reading the original papers. Golang not well supporting supervision trees has more to do with the runtime not allowing to kill a goroutine. See http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2930 http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2930
    - 8y ago
coleifer 8y ago
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/335Qnh-GRcA/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/335Qnh-GRcA/maxresdefault.jpg
- MilQ 8y ago
  Nice idea for Go3 logo
0x4f3759df 8y ago
Since it looks like an infinity symbol, so the little speed burst at the left is not working for me.
beeks10 8y ago
I am going to miss the gopher :( Go's branding will always be the gopher in my eyes.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
For some reason it instantly made me think of the cover of "Go,dog. Go!".
wyas 8y ago
Looks like the logo for a stop-n-shop-style grocery store.
robbyt 8y ago
Looks like they had the interns design this during their down time. Really forgettable, and uninspired.
tzakrajs 8y ago
The logo reminds me of the old ATT 4G LTE logo https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lcdgiiTwcYs/UYvQNF3qnzI/AAAAAAAAm-8/RRX7n_0S9KA/s1600/att-flame.png https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lcdgiiTwcYs/UYvQNF3qnzI/AAAAAAAAm...
rajeshpant 8y ago
why kill the gopher?
sremani 8y ago
I am not a branding expert, and that's a good thing, because it took a full 5 minutes to really figure out what the heck they are doing here. They wanted something "Simple & Speed" to be associated with Go which are certainly attributes of Go I have read about.
TurboHaskal 8y ago
Yikes. What's next, using syntax highlighting on presentations?
Bjorkbat 8y ago
Eh, I'm really not feeling this. I mean, I just really loved that silly little cartoon gopher and his goofy little eyes. It had a personality. This is something that really irritates me about Google and their products, services, "stuff" if you will. Their branding is contemporary but at the same time has absolutely no excitement or personality to it. I mean, it's till contemporary, it still uses interesting colors and stuff, but they strip away all personality from everything that they do in the interest of appealing to a worldwide audience. Whatever, joke's on them, I'm going to vehemently deny that this new brand exists. I'm not going to let a branding agency ruin things for me.
- EnderMB 8y ago
  To be fair, the gopher does appear on their branding in place, just not where the blog post has shown. The agency page for their work on Go features an updated gopher graphic, and I think the home page looks quite nice. The branding booklet looks like standard agency stuff, but if they were to use the gopher a bit more I could get behind it. http://within.us/google-go/ http://within.us/google-go/
danielvf 8y ago
Looks like they are loosing the bespoke Go fonts (https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts) and going with Work Sans and Roboto. I understand the reasoning. Personally, I have a big soft spot in my heart for the go fonts . Whenever I feel like coding like it's 1979 again, I load them up in my editor and pretend I'm looking at well written documentation from my childhood. [edit: Yay, Go fonts remain for source code display!]
- shurcooL 8y ago
  Just checking, but did you see page 19?
  - danielvf 8y ago
    Heh. I stopped at page 18 of the new styleguide at the body font section . So the Go font remains the official font for the display of source code. Yay!!
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  I hadn't seen these yet. Thanks for linking. I was a little late for 1979, but I still enjoy the aesthetic. edit: I've been using Iosevka for a while now— which I guess a mildly similar feel, but narrower.
Isamu 8y ago
They kept the gopher. But they provide a model sheet. "The gopher is not a logo. However, when appropriate, it can and should be used on communications that are Go branded, but should not be used in place of our logo, nor should it be placed too closely around the logo, so as to infer it's an alternate logo." Hey, they linked to a talk by Renee French about her design of the gopher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rw_B4yY69k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rw_B4yY69k
- kps 8y ago
  > “… nor should [the gopher] be placed too closely around the logo, so as to infer it's an alternate logo.” I doubt the gopher is either clever enough or interested enough to infer that.
hazeii 8y ago
Perhaps this won't be a popular sentiment, but since when did programming languages need brand identity?
- aphistic 8y ago
  Around the time exploits needed fancy names.
- whitepoplar 8y ago
  Always! People underestimate the subliminal effects of good design. In the early days of Slack, several people I know (not in tech) were practically begging to use it at their workplace. The reason? The branding was "mesmerizing," particularly the hash. I think the same goes for programming languages.
- ben509 8y ago
  It seems like a factual claim, not a sentiment. Languages do need to develop a critical mass of resources related to them, people need to provide services for them, and you do want to identify which ones are official. For that purpose, a brand identity is going to be helpful. (At least as helpful as a brand can be.) In a nutshell, it's about ensuring people can distinguish between golang.org and w3schools.com.
- cup-of-tea 8y ago
  One of the reasons I really like Python is it never had any of this crap. It's popular just because it's useful and people like it.
  - matthberg 8y ago
    I think that though Python is popular independent of its branding, it definitely has a strong branding system, just less explicitly stated as go's. Their font is quite iconic, and their logo and colors more so: https://www.python.org/community/logos/ https://www.python.org/community/logos/
    - 8y ago
kown223 8y ago
at start I actually had doubts on go due to the mascot and the naming, like Go -> Google, they name it after the company, another thing they expect to put google in front of it and we have to love it.
jaytaylor 8y ago
Gopher got demoted to page 22? What a sad day to be a gopher.
zokier 8y ago
This makes me incredibly (to me) sad. The identity is so completely soulless, and the logo is the opposite of timeless, trying to grasp currently oh so hip and pop retro aesthetic. Nevermind that the retro logo and super sleek modern visual identity seems to clash with each other, both are abandoning the playfulness that was so prevalent before, most clearly evident in the various Go gopher illustrations. And its not that the designs here are bad in isolation; overall the visual identity is very sleek, and I could imagine it working well for something else; RedHat and JetBrains are the first things that come to mind. But for Go, this logo is the one that I acknowledge: https://blog.golang.org/gopher/logo.png https://blog.golang.org/gopher/logo.png Funny thing here is that I'm don't even like Go that much, and still I had such strong negative reaction to this branding.
- hashmal 8y ago
  > I could imagine it working well for something else this sums up why this new brand isn't good.
  - wiremine 8y ago
    This is true of ANY good logo before it gets traction. There's nothing special about the Apple logo (or Apple as the name of a corporate name), for example. I mean, seriously, it's a clip art apple with a bit out of it. What makes it a great logo is everything in your head and heart that is associated, good or bad, with that image.
- juliangoldsmith 8y ago
  I'd agree here. It's like they tried to make the new branding as generic as they possibly could. I liked the simple, basic site that Go has always used. It seems inevitable that they'll redo the site, to include megabytes of JavaScript for features that nobody wants, like hijacked scrolling. (The site[0] for the design agency they talk about loads about 3 MB. Almost none of it is images. The site loads all that to display approximately ten words.) Also, >The circular shape of the letters hints at the eyes of the Go gopher, creating a familiar shape and allowing the mark and the mascot to pair well together. If by "pairing well together", you mean not going together in any way, then yes. [0]: http://within.us/ http://within.us/
superrad 8y ago
It looks really bland and unremarkable now. Maybe just a little bit understated.
ben509 8y ago
The circular shape of the letters hints at the eyes of the Go gopher, creating a familiar shape I found it agreeable, woody, complex and balanced, with notes of ash and clover.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  Is that a bit of peach on the finish? And maybe some citrus?
- masonic 8y ago
  But: are they sustainably harvested?
- guelo 8y ago
  https://ibb.co/jB786x https://ibb.co/jB786x
jasonkostempski 8y ago
"Our logo follows the brand’s core philosophy of simplicity over complexity." The logo and the philosophy behind it are the first things anyone, professional designer or not, would think of. If Go's philosophy was to implement the first thing that comes to mind, it would have generics by now :) I think they need to put a little more thought into this. Edit: Maybe the design could could incorporate a visual representation of goroutines in some way?
shurcooL 8y ago
I was very happy to see the Go font was a part of this (page 19).
ysleepy 8y ago
Looks awfully like design by committee, lowest common denominator taste. There is zero distinctiveness and character. Even java kept coffee cup and duke.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  Doesn't look like design by committee to me, just shows lack of experience.
- matt4077 8y ago
  Even? If there's one crime against UI and design that stands far above the others, it's Java's GUI framework.
- frou_dh 8y ago
  Gotta say I love Duke even though I've never done Java. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Duke_%28Java_mascot%29_waving.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Duke_%28...
zapita 8y ago
"Rest easy, our beloved Gopher Mascot remains at the center of our brand" Then why is the mascot not featured in the post even once?
indescions_2018 8y ago
Can't resist a good design critique so here goes. My take echoes many of the gut first impressions expressed by others. Presumably the Go design team added the speed lines at the left to connote speed, performance, and and the future progress and adoption of the language. But the way the lines are conceived is generic. The variation of lengths, meant to evoke the chaotic air turbulence behind a rapidly accelerating race car, is tired. Nothing we haven't seen millions of times before. And not particularly well thought out. In direct contradiction to the expressive power and beauty of the language itself. The best thing about the design is of course the hidden encapsulation of the mathematical symbol for "infinity". Although, again I find myself at a loss to understand the exact nature of the relation. A possible reference to the ability to spawn millions of goroutines? The execution of the infinity symbol itself is muddled by the sharp corners of the G's aperture. Shouldn't it be more rounded? It's menacing resemblance to a PC-era on/off power symbol rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise is distracting. And lastly, the most troubling of all. Whither the beloved Gopher? A clear nod to the linux penguin. And a secret totem to those who have been initiated. A hieroglyph for the high priests. No text necessary. Make no doubt about what this rebranding portends. Enterprise Go, Team Edition coming soon ;)
- tyrankh 8y ago
  > A clear nod to the linux penguin. And a secret totem to those who have been initiated. A hieroglyph for the high priests. No text necessary. That's... looking into it quite a lot, isn't it? It seems like just a playful mascot.
  - tomjakubowski 8y ago
    Yeah, if anything it's a nod to Plan 9's Glenda the bunny -- they're by the same artist, even!
- andrenth 8y ago
  > In direct contradiction to the expressive power and beauty of the language itself. Well Go doesn’t particularly excel in the expressiveness department, so in that sense I guess this new logo is fitting?
4ad 8y ago
Imagine how many external contributors could have been sponsored to work on Go for the money Google blew on this project.
- UncleEntity 8y ago
  How much does it cost to "refine" the Speed Racer logo?
  - 4ad 8y ago
    Way more than you think. And now that I told you that, 10-50x more than you revised estimation.
mpfundstein 8y ago
this is so stupid ... a freaking brand book for a programming language. god damn :-) can we get more hipster? on the other hand, its also fun. maybe i should just complain less and enjoy the beautiful colors :D
adjagu 8y ago
Reminds me of the logo for GQ India. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/GQ_India_logo.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/GQ_India_logo...
shiado 8y ago
I know it is petty and irrational but I judge the quality of a software project by how boring it looks, where boringness is better. The more it looks like some university professor's web 0.1 hand-coded HTML project circa 1993 the better. Just look at this sexy boring website, it tells you that things are going to work perfectly with no bullshit or corporate-speak included. https://gcc.gnu.org/ https://gcc.gnu.org/
- andrewmcwatters 8y ago
  I don't think it's petty or irrational. It signals to me that there are more important things than selling decal stickers and t-shirts. It says we don't care about exposing this technology to the largest possible crowd and diluting what can be produced with it. I love C and Lua, and both are untrendy, long-lasting languages that don't attract particular crowds, and it means that when I produce something with them, unlike the trendier side of software development, it will actually last and run 5 years from now. I think branding like this is a double edged sword. It says, "We're trendy and attractive, but established," and at the same time it says, "We guarantee you're going to love our mascot plushies and the high quality $15 decal stickers you're going to slap on your $1,299 MacBook Pro that you just got back from the Apple Store over a stuck key repair."
- rainbowmverse 8y ago
  Compare to clang's website, which has the same aesthetic and is half as busy (visually): https://clang.llvm.org/ https://clang.llvm.org/
  - iaabtpbtpnn 8y ago
    The logo for LLVM is a big silver dragon
- fermienrico 8y ago
  I totally agree, the more boring, the better. Like Berkshire Hathway's website [1]. This is especially true for things like investment firms and programming languages. The fact that they don't spend any ounce of time/resources on branding itself is a cool brand. They don't need it and they don't give a shit. Now, I do not endorse a complete neglect for cohesiveness and consistency. In the case of Go, it has an interesting interplay between sophistication and fun - this was a perfect opportunity to make an xkcd style cartoony brand that conveyed both simultaneously. Instead what we got is an infuriating bullshit that looks like one of those stock logo/branding templates I can buy for $19.95. Sigh. [1] http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/
oseph 8y ago
This is so much better than that silly cartoon they had before. Sure it was cute and fun, but for a modern language it felt so ... childish. As someone who works professionally as an illustrator and dabbles with code, this is just my two cents, and whether you like or dislike a logo is 100% entirely subjective. This new logo/identity feels much more refreshing and importantly, professional. At least in my books. Next up, Java's atrocious coffee cup logo perhaps?
downer68 8y ago
Honest opinion: Yuck. Constructive feedback: I prefer the Gopher.
nukeop 8y ago
Go developers are busy making fancy (or rather, pretty generic and bland) logos and thinking about "brand identities", while developers who use other languages do actual work. Does a programming language really need a logo, a cartoony mascot, an entire "brand guide" pamphlet and a "visual identity"? RMS was right when he said that software industry is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. We see this when developers pick their tools not according to their functionality, but to what is trendy and looks cool at the moment.
- notriddle 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure that Google hires separate people to work on branding and programming.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
deevolution 8y ago
The gopher was what initally caught my attention. Cant believe they did away of that little dude.
tomc1985 8y ago
Why...the...fuck.... does a programming language need a branding team?????
- andrewmcwatters 8y ago
  To sell you shit, and sell you the appeal of using the language.
omarforgotpwd 8y ago
Whatever. Everyone hates new designs at first and then we get used to them. Go is cool and I think it could be a good thing that they're putting some work into making it look cool. It's good to have an awareness of your programming language among non-technical people and use branding to communicate qualities they can't pick up by actually using the language.
- zokier 8y ago
  > they're putting some work into making it look cool They might be trying to make it look cool, but what they have accomplished is to make it look corporate, which is pretty much diametrically opposite of cool.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    If you're going to pick a language based on what's "cool", you might not be golang's target user base anyway...
    - zokier 8y ago
      GP comments choice of words, not mine
  - omarforgotpwd 8y ago
    Developers will use Go because if its technical aspects.Features like concurrency primitives that make go what it is. Nobody is going to ditch Go because they don't like the new branding. "Rewrite everything in Rust, the new logo sucks". The branding is for non technical people, like executives and other non-technical employees across the company. What they are trying to convey to these people is that there is something new, exciting, and better happening with Go -- something developers know, but others who don't understand technical details won't get. The other purpose is probably to highlight to Alphabet investors the investments Google is making in the Go programing language, and to try and make them understand how impactful that investment has been.
wscott 8y ago
I immediately thought of the book Go, Dog Go! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go,_Dog._Go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go,_Dog._Go! The old gopher wasn't serious either, but at least it was fun.
Fukkaudeku 8y ago
Ironically, it looks very generic.
- paultopia 8y ago
  DOH. I totally came here to make this very joke. You win, good gentleperson. You win.
21 8y ago
Reading the comments here makes it clear why most programmers should stay away from design. I've programmed for 20 years now, but that stupid gopher and the way it was everywhere was a serious put off for me on giving Go a look. Nerdy AF. Good riddance. I wonder if there was a huge internal battle between the brand savvy people which realized how terrible the gopher was, and the Go creators. Guys, don't be so stereotypical, expand your horizon outside of Pokemon and Star Wars esthetics. I'll put it in a more obvious form: a lot of you like Apple, can you imagine for a second that gopher on anything Apple? Downvotes away...
- tripa 8y ago
  Many years ago, I've had a project manager reluctant to have us commit to the Hadoop ecosystem because, come on, "Pig", "Zoo"[keeper]... this can't be serious! Sometimes people are the problem. Of course they're just names and have no incidence whatsoever on the relevance of a project. Until they do. For terrible reasons.
- salgernon 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogcow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogcow OK, its old - but it certainly served the same purpose in branding "the priesthood" that lived and breathed the ecosystem. Less prevelent: see Hexley, Darwin's (unofficial) BSD-Devil Platypus mascot - http://www.hexley.com http://www.hexley.com
- allenu 8y ago
  I totally agree. I only started playing with Go a few months ago and remember how amateurish the website and the mascot made it look. It gave the impression that it was a work in progress and research project instead of something that's been around for 8 years and used professionally.
  - zeveb 8y ago
    > I only started playing with Go a few months ago and remember how amateurish the website and the mascot made it look. If good, clean text which displays in any browser is amateurish … then I prefer amateurism to professionalism. I really appreciate that the Go website (appears to be) good, clean HTML.
tripa 8y ago
I love how the favicon's still a gopher.
- sus_007 8y ago
  Not for long I think, they probably will redesign their entire site too.
keyle 8y ago
Highly disappointing. They took the soul out of it, the gopher is not even included as part of the logo, like a wink in history. The Gopher IS GO! Its scruffy looks, small and mighty made it approachable and fun. This looks like they hired an external team of wan#&$%, pardon the term, but humour me for a second: the brand guide pdf: - ven diagram, check - big wanky words, check - big wanky opposite words, check - proxy terms that are samey to any brand they'd do, check This could have been delivered on April 1st.
- stirner 8y ago
  I checked the date to make sure this wasn't an old April Fools' joke. The new design language is minimalistic, but it's not simple, and doesn't reflect the programming language at all.
jasonmoo 8y ago
It looks like a ride-sharing service logo.
jweir 8y ago
This won't make the language any better. It will make the language more approachable for new comers. The Go website is _almost_ as bare bones as it gets. It functions fine and we are familiar with it. But compared to say Python, the site looks pretty amateur. If you were to judge a language by its website, I'd say Python looks better. The new branding can lead the way to a more put together presentation, and that could be good for the growth of the community.
- superbaconman 8y ago
  I don't care so much about the way a sight looks so long as it works well. Both the go and python sites work well for me, thus they're models in my mind for well documented languages.
- bitmapbrother 8y ago
  The logo is just the start. The website will also be refreshed. The website will be getting a refresh based on the new design. Since we are making significant changes, we are also taking this opportunity to update our website infrastructure to support internationalization and multilingual to better serve our global community. The migration will happen in stages over the next few months starting with this blog.
  - everybodyknows 8y ago
    Go's online documentation is the best I've ever seen for a language. You can still hear Rob Pike's diction in the core functionality sections -- precise as a scalpel. Now a "design agency" has their claws into it. My own feelings are nausea, and fear.
rcdmd 8y ago
The "Go logo" has always been something like "-=GO"[1]. There's not much changing here, unless the announcement signals that they're going to start de-emphasizing the acquired-taste gopher. [1] See the black/white image halfway down the page-- https://blog.golang.org/gopher https://blog.golang.org/gopher
- im_dario 8y ago
  Spot on. It seems to me that everybody missed the point. The gopher won't go away (it appears in the official guide) but this new brand is just a modern evolution of the official logo which was eclipsed by the gopher.
mrmondo 8y ago
While I don't really 'care' about the logo of a programming language per se, this makes 'GO' look like a courier / delivery company to me, it also seems a little odd that both letters are the same case.
pier25 8y ago
It's ugly. Looks like a brand of sport shoes for 12 year olds. I think the brand for a programming language like Go should not look like a toy.
- arnvald 8y ago
  That was exactly my first thought. Just add 2 more letters and you have "GOAL", a new brand of soccer equipment for children.
smnplk 8y ago
Does not compute. Go is speed now and Rust is just, well rust ?
- slezyr 8y ago
  It's faster write programs in Go. But programs in Rust run faster.
smnplk 8y ago
Is Go a programing language that lands you a job the fastest these days ?
mortdeus 8y ago
why fix whats not broken? I like the plan 9/unix/KISS style? Like who seriously sat there and was like, this is something we need help with and was like we need outside help with this. The brand book is astonishingly horrible and is not an improvement on the way we are digesting the information.
wiremine 8y ago
Caveat: I'm a software developer who's worked in agencies for half of my 20 year career. A few thoughts: 1. Branding is hard: everybody things they can do it. Creative direction and art direction are really, really hard. If you haven't seen the "Make my logo bigger cream" video, go watch it, and then have some grace with the Go team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgcX0y1Nzhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgcX0y1Nzhs 2. A brand is WAY more than a logo. I get that's the first thing you grab, but the logo is just the identify of the brand. If you think it's all creative mumbo jumbo, I encourage you to go read Aaker's "Building Strong Brands" https://www.amazon.com/Building-Strong-Brands-David-Aaker/dp/002900151X https://www.amazon.com/Building-Strong-Brands-David-Aaker/dp... Go read the Brand Guide twice before you start throwing darts. https://storage.googleapis.com/golang-assets/go-brand-book-v1.0.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/golang-assets/go-brand-book-v... Having seen 100s of these over the years, this is excellent work from people who honestly care. It also addresses almost every single negative comment on this thread. I also like how they call out explicitely "The gopher is not a logo" which is entirely true. I think it's more of a "lovemark" (see https://www.amazon.com/Lovemarks-Kevin-Roberts/dp/157687270X https://www.amazon.com/Lovemarks-Kevin-Roberts/dp/157687270X) It's not my favorite logo, but it's definitely on brand. If the go team is reading this: it might help if you lead with the mark and the mascot together. I think the logo in isolation is what's generating the strong reaction.
- kenshi 8y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to post all those informative links. Usually these kinds of discussions end up being people expressing what they like or dislike about the re-brand. I'd suggest that a re-brand that didn't provoke a strong reaction was a waste of time.
- rukuu001 8y ago
  > A brand is WAY more than a logo. I thought it was super-interesting they used the word 'brand' instead of 'branding'. As if a brand ("what people say about you when you're not listening") could be conjured from a logo and set of colours.
- carapace 8y ago
  I see that "Brand Guide" as style over substance personified: > Roboto is a contemporary sans serif typeface designed for readability. That's an oxymoron: "sans serif typeface designed for readability". Thin sans serif body text is how you show you hate your reader's eyes. And they didn't even run a damn spell-checker over the thing: > For additional background and guideance (sic) (Points for using the correct word "typeface" in lieu of "font" tho. Are you watching Woz!?)
jehlakj 8y ago
Reminds me of a logo that was on a tv remote controller I used to have. Do they seriously think it’s witty to most people? All I see is a two letter word without any context or deeper implications. Okay, maybe the word is moving right. But that’s it.
KAdot 8y ago
Go™ Enterprise Edition.
bitmapbrother 8y ago
The new logo actually has its roots in the original logo designed by Renee French. https://blog.golang.org/gopher/logo.png https://blog.golang.org/gopher/logo.png Rene French also suggested they use the Gopher, he originally designed for a radio station promotion, as the mascot for the language.
rn2dy2018 8y ago
bad move, Go team!
rn2dy2018 8y ago
1. Go already has a brand and logo recognized by everyone. 2. Go is a programming language, not a brand, I as a developer don't really care what the brand look like. So, to the community and the GO team: please don't make this a big deal!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
shirro 8y ago
Looks like a courier company. Very bland and corporate looking which I guess is the focus of Go as a language. It am a mediocre programmer so I really like Go, it is my main language, but it is an uninspiring language by design. This logo looks aimed at suits and not the Go community. That might not be a bad thing for Go jobs and for Google. Open source communities often have puns in naming or plushy worthy logos and just generally playfulness which I don't see in this logo.
- pwaivers 8y ago
  Reminds me of the playful acronym for PHP, which is "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor".
miguelmota 8y ago
At first glance I disliked it, but after a second look at it I think it's quite nice. It's bold, clean, and simple. People are generally resistant to change but it's something they'll become accustomed to fairly quick. Glad to know they kept the little guy gopher mascot.
newscracker 8y ago
Logo design and acceptance (by the ones commissioning it) is a strange thing, in my experience. This new logo looks like a gas/fuel station logo or a racing logo. I can't imagine it being dissociated with these categories. The older gopher one, though kinda whimsical, was nicer, cuter and amenable to be modified to indicate different things in different contexts. This new logo is static and is the opposite of the old one in many ways. New logo designs, of things that have been around for sometime, invite derision and ridicule (and for good measure). Getting used to such decisions will take time.
- PinkMilkshake 8y ago
  Ha! Gas station was the first thing that came to my mind, then car rental company.
misrab 8y ago
Noooooooooooooooooo!!!! gophers 4eva, I refuse the new logo.
tentakull 8y ago
This is interesting to me. I have more than a peripheral interest in art and design, but my day job is heavy systems programming using Go/Scala and the like. I think there is a huge market advantage to correctly branding stuff developers use. For me this is, excuse the hyperbole, almost objectively a terrible rebranding of Go. The Gopher, while not currently wholely representative of what Go has become...is iconic and a lovely homage to the playfulness and irreverency of hacker culture. What an opportunity to update and infuse the brand with how the language has developed. I love what other people are doing with the gopher (like the the dep packager). On top of this, I can't get over the fact that the design team can't draw. What? How much are you guys getting paid?
darren0 8y ago
This is really the wrong move. Really sucks the personality out of go. I felt the old brand clearly highlighted the important thing is, and where the most time is spent, is the code
gehwartzen 8y ago
I may be in the rare (for this site) situation of never having heard of of GO (I'm not a programmer) when I clicked the link and my first impression was that this was rebranding for some food delivery service.
- prawn 8y ago
  I thought "courier" immediately. I think it's clean and effective, but I don't have any interest/care for the language and don't recall ever having seen its gopher or whatever represented it before. I can appreciate that those who have would have a stronger and different reaction.
thefounder 8y ago
I like the old brand better... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Golang.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Golang.p...
infonull 8y ago
Bland and forgettable. The gopher mascot was embraced by the community. It's a programming language... the need for a "corporate brand treatment" should be mocked.
aaronang 8y ago
It looks like the Gopher mascot will still be on the (possible) new frontpage http://within.us/google-go/ http://within.us/google-go/.
sudhirj 8y ago
It's really sad and insulting to the language itself to do this - while there's nothing wrong with the design assets and guidelines, this looks like it was a template bought for $29.99 off a design website. The problem is that the design has no connection or correlation at all with what the design is for. The difference is superbly obvious in the slide masters - look at the code samples - that code looks like it has absolutely no place on a slide like that. That's true of the entire design language - it's great for a startup trying to be cool, but has nothing to do with Go. It's like what we'd get if we asked one of our designer interns to come with a brand language and the only brief they were given is "It's called Go, and this mascot is non-negotiable".
pjmlp 8y ago
Man, even I prefer that cute little gopher to this new branding. Better spend money improving the real issues of the language, instead of paying to agencies for this outcome.
deltron3030 8y ago
I don't like the big thin typeface in those materials, too snobby. The logo itself is OK, they should have used a bold font like that, and maybe just use the outlines to represent the lightweightness visually.
MilQ 8y ago
Only I think that new logo looks like New Balance logo? http://www.freelogovectors.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/new-balance-logo.jpg http://www.freelogovectors.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ne... This lines and italic font.
PinkMilkshake 8y ago
I guess ya'll should just switch to erlang then with it's negative space internet explorer logo.
spludge 8y ago
The gopher was never the logo. From the brand book: > "The gopher is not a logo" The gopher stays on as go's mascot. The brand book even has a page on how to draw it!
jatins 8y ago
There's only one purpose of good brand identity and that's to be remembered. I don't see how this is more memorable than the beloved Gopher. Edit: Gopher is still the official mascot, though. So that's good.
kalleboo 8y ago
Perhaps this new brand was just a psychological experiment to see how easy it is to bait Hacker News into a 200+ comment thread on bikeshedding?
- cerberusss 8y ago
  I see you're being downvoted but this whole topic indeed is just that, bikeshedding.
baby 8y ago
Wow. This is bad. It looks like a tire or automotive company logo for some reason. It seems like someone with no real design intuition was in charge of picking the final logo. Why not make several ones and ask the community for their favorite one?
fnwx17 8y ago
the logo is pretty forgettable, but on the bright side - at page 24 of the PDF they announced that Go 2.0 will have generics
auxten 8y ago
http://gopher.gg/ http://gopher.gg/
gaius 8y ago
Once the marketing types take over its the beginning of the end.
lambda021 8y ago
Gopher is a fork of Go, but keeps the cute Gopher logo FOREVER. ;) LONG LIVE GOPHER! Our homepage: http://gopher.gg http://gopher.gg
- auxten 8y ago
  that's cool! apply for gopher maintainer
sarabande 8y ago
- Who is responsible for such rebrandings? Does the Google marketing team decide one day that the Go language needs a new identity, or was this a request by the language designers? - Does a rebranding need approval from the language designers?
holografix 8y ago
#NotMyLogo
hawski 8y ago
The Gopher took a nice cozy corporate job and is sitting now in a cubicle. He wears a suit and a tie instead of Hawaiian shirt. It's a serious business now.
sargas 8y ago
This new logo looks sterile and boring, creativity-wise. It isn't clever neither. I'm excited for the official website redesign, however. It needs it.
kentt 8y ago
I'm so glad I don't have to sit through design presentations anymore. Just reading the first few words of the "Brand Book" made me die inside.
hajderr 8y ago
So you're a racing company?
ArchieT 8y ago
One thing about this new branding is that I have never ever seen Go spelled with all caps (GO). Most only see it as either "Go" or "go". Spelling it with all caps ("GO") makes it look like a single shapeless typographic slab. "Go" is found in text, and "go" is found in code, cmd and everything related. In the original the letters were thinner, and that could have made it feel more lightweight, so it wasn't that bad.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
gamw_mana_sou 8y ago
Judging from the palette, it looks to me that they're getting the language prepared for Android or more possibly Fuchsia. I'm eager to see how they're going to replace Java little-by-little.
gumpyoung 8y ago
The "new" logo looks even worse than TNT or UPS... Should we start a petition on Change.org to stop this happening??

351 points by andybons 8y ago

I know folks love the gopher, but I’m a fan of this to be honest. The hand drawn gopher just looked... childish? It definitely didn’t give me the impression of an efficient and well put together programming language.

misterbowfinger 8y ago
yeah neither does a cockroach for a database.
- thanatos_dem 8y ago
  Yeah, but CRDB’s logo is pretty stylized and simple/clean. The hand drawn style for the gopher just didn’t work for a lot of applications. It was too detailed to use as an icon, and the lines were too thin to look good when printed.
catach 8y ago
The gopher isn't going away, though. The last pages of the brand book pdf give guidance on how to use it.
Groxx 8y ago
The gopher's in the brand book. Doesn't appear to be going anywhere.
bitwize 8y ago
The Go gopher is a redraw of Glenda, the Plan 9 bunny. Many of Plan 9's principals worked on Go, which is itself an update of Alef, Plan 9's planned systems language, before it was canned and replaced with C. I'm sure he'll still be around as a mascot. He's still on the site's main page. I really don't see the problem with him -- most commercial internet servers run a kernel with a cute penguin mascot, and many of the rest run a kernel with a cute mascot who is literally the Devil -- but I can appreciate the strategy of opening with a punchy, barebones logotype.
- cschmidt 8y ago
  Interesting, I didn't know that https://9p.io/plan9/glenda.html https://9p.io/plan9/glenda.html
- bitmapbrother 8y ago
  Was it really a redraw of the Plan 9 bunny? According to the Go website it says the gopher was created for a radio station fund raiser. About 15 years ago—long before the Go project—the gopher first appeared as a promotion for the WFMU radio station in New Jersey. Renee French was commissioned to design a T-shirt for an annual fundraiser and out came the gopher.
  - bitwize 8y ago
    Guess who also designed Glenda.
    - bitmapbrother 8y ago
      French, of course. The Gopher, however, is not a "redraw" of the rabbit.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  You forgot Inferno and Limbo.
lillesvin 8y ago
It's probably silly but I like it when logos/mascots are like that—you know, slightly helpless and not oozing of focused branding efforts. It makes me feel more certain that the language/technology is used because of its actual merits rather than its branding.

VohuMana 8y ago

Sleek new logo makes it look like a bicycle renting start up. While I think its good to refresh branding and aim to unify more things, I will miss the Go Gopher.

jerf 8y ago
I'm sure it's head will poke up here and there.
venning 8y ago
The gopher didn't go away. You can find it on pages 21 & 22 of the new Brand Book: https://storage.googleapis.com/golang-assets/go-brand-book-v1.0.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/golang-assets/go-brand-book-v...
- VohuMana 8y ago
  Nice! In that case I am all on board with the new logo
electricslpnsld 8y ago
Renee French, the original illustrator of the Go Gopher, is still updating the gopher: http://reneefrench.blogspot.com http://reneefrench.blogspot.com I'm partial to this take on the little fella: http://reneefrench.blogspot.com/2016/11/blog-post.html http://reneefrench.blogspot.com/2016/11/blog-post.html
- VohuMana 8y ago
  That is amazing! I love it :D
- crispinb 8y ago
  Creepy (the fuzzy gopher-dalek, not you)

kenhwang 8y ago

Well this certainly looks very corporate and professional now. I suppose that fits their targeted audience better.

philip1209 8y ago
It also makes developers vouching for Go seem more credible.
- leshow 8y ago
  Do we really have to suck the fun out of everything in order to look 'credible'?
  - virtuabhi 8y ago
    Well, look at comments on any submission related to CockroachDB
  - kenhwang 8y ago
    Fun was probably getting in Go's way in becoming the next Java.
    - leshow 8y ago
      IMO Go is in Go's way if becoming the next Java.

philip1209 8y ago

A few more details on the design agency's site: http://within.us/google-go/ http://within.us/google-go/

cschmidt 8y ago
The phone mockup is weird. Can you even install Go on a phone?
- bitmapbrother 8y ago
  You can certainly create Go based mobile applications on iOS and Android.
- dsl 8y ago
  I lost it at the Go business cards...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

jxub 8y ago

The rebranding might make the language look sleeker and more enterprisey but it looks that they're rejecting their spirit of playfulness in order to appeal to the likes of Oracle clients and take away more Java mindshare.

woolvalley 8y ago
TBH I've always thought of Go as Google's Java. With some decisions to make developing at super-big-co even nicer, which helps you at google scale.
- amelius 8y ago
  I always thought of Go as Google's Erlang.
  - jupp0r 8y ago
    I think this gets too many downvotes. Yes, static vs dynamic typing. Yes, imperative vs functional language. On the other hand, CSP is conceptually fairly close to the Actor Model, so there are definitely similarities. I've written go code that looks similar to Erlang (a go routine receiving messages from an `interface{}` channel in a for loop and then dispatching based on the type.
    - zzzcpan 8y ago
      Conceptually they are worlds apart. Supervision trees are even impossible in idiomatic Go.
      - jupp0r 8y ago
        Supervision trees have nothing to do with Actors or CSP. I can recommend reading the original papers. Golang not well supporting supervision trees has more to do with the runtime not allowing to kill a goroutine. See http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2930 http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2930
  - 8y ago

coleifer 8y ago

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/335Qnh-GRcA/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/335Qnh-GRcA/maxresdefault.jpg

MilQ 8y ago
Nice idea for Go3 logo

0x4f3759df 8y ago

Since it looks like an infinity symbol, so the little speed burst at the left is not working for me.

beeks10 8y ago

I am going to miss the gopher :( Go's branding will always be the gopher in my eyes.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

For some reason it instantly made me think of the cover of "Go,dog. Go!".

wyas 8y ago

Looks like the logo for a stop-n-shop-style grocery store.

robbyt 8y ago

Looks like they had the interns design this during their down time. Really forgettable, and uninspired.

tzakrajs 8y ago

The logo reminds me of the old ATT 4G LTE logo https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lcdgiiTwcYs/UYvQNF3qnzI/AAAAAAAAm-8/RRX7n_0S9KA/s1600/att-flame.png https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lcdgiiTwcYs/UYvQNF3qnzI/AAAAAAAAm...

rajeshpant 8y ago

why kill the gopher?

sremani 8y ago

I am not a branding expert, and that's a good thing, because it took a full 5 minutes to really figure out what the heck they are doing here. They wanted something "Simple & Speed" to be associated with Go which are certainly attributes of Go I have read about.

TurboHaskal 8y ago

Yikes. What's next, using syntax highlighting on presentations?

Bjorkbat 8y ago

Eh, I'm really not feeling this. I mean, I just really loved that silly little cartoon gopher and his goofy little eyes. It had a personality. This is something that really irritates me about Google and their products, services, "stuff" if you will. Their branding is contemporary but at the same time has absolutely no excitement or personality to it. I mean, it's till contemporary, it still uses interesting colors and stuff, but they strip away all personality from everything that they do in the interest of appealing to a worldwide audience. Whatever, joke's on them, I'm going to vehemently deny that this new brand exists. I'm not going to let a branding agency ruin things for me.

EnderMB 8y ago
To be fair, the gopher does appear on their branding in place, just not where the blog post has shown. The agency page for their work on Go features an updated gopher graphic, and I think the home page looks quite nice. The branding booklet looks like standard agency stuff, but if they were to use the gopher a bit more I could get behind it. http://within.us/google-go/ http://within.us/google-go/

danielvf 8y ago

Looks like they are loosing the bespoke Go fonts (https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts) and going with Work Sans and Roboto. I understand the reasoning. Personally, I have a big soft spot in my heart for the go fonts . Whenever I feel like coding like it's 1979 again, I load them up in my editor and pretend I'm looking at well written documentation from my childhood. [edit: Yay, Go fonts remain for source code display!]

shurcooL 8y ago
Just checking, but did you see page 19?
- danielvf 8y ago
  Heh. I stopped at page 18 of the new styleguide at the body font section . So the Go font remains the official font for the display of source code. Yay!!
52-6F-62 8y ago
I hadn't seen these yet. Thanks for linking. I was a little late for 1979, but I still enjoy the aesthetic. edit: I've been using Iosevka for a while now— which I guess a mildly similar feel, but narrower.

Isamu 8y ago

They kept the gopher. But they provide a model sheet. "The gopher is not a logo. However, when appropriate, it can and should be used on communications that are Go branded, but should not be used in place of our logo, nor should it be placed too closely around the logo, so as to infer it's an alternate logo." Hey, they linked to a talk by Renee French about her design of the gopher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rw_B4yY69k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rw_B4yY69k

kps 8y ago
> “… nor should [the gopher] be placed too closely around the logo, so as to infer it's an alternate logo.” I doubt the gopher is either clever enough or interested enough to infer that.

hazeii 8y ago

Perhaps this won't be a popular sentiment, but since when did programming languages need brand identity?

aphistic 8y ago
Around the time exploits needed fancy names.
whitepoplar 8y ago
Always! People underestimate the subliminal effects of good design. In the early days of Slack, several people I know (not in tech) were practically begging to use it at their workplace. The reason? The branding was "mesmerizing," particularly the hash. I think the same goes for programming languages.
ben509 8y ago
It seems like a factual claim, not a sentiment. Languages do need to develop a critical mass of resources related to them, people need to provide services for them, and you do want to identify which ones are official. For that purpose, a brand identity is going to be helpful. (At least as helpful as a brand can be.) In a nutshell, it's about ensuring people can distinguish between golang.org and w3schools.com.
cup-of-tea 8y ago
One of the reasons I really like Python is it never had any of this crap. It's popular just because it's useful and people like it.
- matthberg 8y ago
  I think that though Python is popular independent of its branding, it definitely has a strong branding system, just less explicitly stated as go's. Their font is quite iconic, and their logo and colors more so: https://www.python.org/community/logos/ https://www.python.org/community/logos/
  - 8y ago

kown223 8y ago

at start I actually had doubts on go due to the mascot and the naming, like Go -> Google, they name it after the company, another thing they expect to put google in front of it and we have to love it.

jaytaylor 8y ago

Gopher got demoted to page 22? What a sad day to be a gopher.

zokier 8y ago

This makes me incredibly (to me) sad. The identity is so completely soulless, and the logo is the opposite of timeless, trying to grasp currently oh so hip and pop retro aesthetic. Nevermind that the retro logo and super sleek modern visual identity seems to clash with each other, both are abandoning the playfulness that was so prevalent before, most clearly evident in the various Go gopher illustrations. And its not that the designs here are bad in isolation; overall the visual identity is very sleek, and I could imagine it working well for something else; RedHat and JetBrains are the first things that come to mind. But for Go, this logo is the one that I acknowledge: https://blog.golang.org/gopher/logo.png https://blog.golang.org/gopher/logo.png Funny thing here is that I'm don't even like Go that much, and still I had such strong negative reaction to this branding.

hashmal 8y ago
> I could imagine it working well for something else this sums up why this new brand isn't good.
- wiremine 8y ago
  This is true of ANY good logo before it gets traction. There's nothing special about the Apple logo (or Apple as the name of a corporate name), for example. I mean, seriously, it's a clip art apple with a bit out of it. What makes it a great logo is everything in your head and heart that is associated, good or bad, with that image.
juliangoldsmith 8y ago
I'd agree here. It's like they tried to make the new branding as generic as they possibly could. I liked the simple, basic site that Go has always used. It seems inevitable that they'll redo the site, to include megabytes of JavaScript for features that nobody wants, like hijacked scrolling. (The site[0] for the design agency they talk about loads about 3 MB. Almost none of it is images. The site loads all that to display approximately ten words.) Also, >The circular shape of the letters hints at the eyes of the Go gopher, creating a familiar shape and allowing the mark and the mascot to pair well together. If by "pairing well together", you mean not going together in any way, then yes. [0]: http://within.us/ http://within.us/

superrad 8y ago

It looks really bland and unremarkable now. Maybe just a little bit understated.

ben509 8y ago

The circular shape of the letters hints at the eyes of the Go gopher, creating a familiar shape I found it agreeable, woody, complex and balanced, with notes of ash and clover.

52-6F-62 8y ago
Is that a bit of peach on the finish? And maybe some citrus?
masonic 8y ago
But: are they sustainably harvested?
guelo 8y ago
https://ibb.co/jB786x https://ibb.co/jB786x

jasonkostempski 8y ago

"Our logo follows the brand’s core philosophy of simplicity over complexity." The logo and the philosophy behind it are the first things anyone, professional designer or not, would think of. If Go's philosophy was to implement the first thing that comes to mind, it would have generics by now :) I think they need to put a little more thought into this. Edit: Maybe the design could could incorporate a visual representation of goroutines in some way?

shurcooL 8y ago

I was very happy to see the Go font was a part of this (page 19).

ysleepy 8y ago

Looks awfully like design by committee, lowest common denominator taste. There is zero distinctiveness and character. Even java kept coffee cup and duke.

zzzcpan 8y ago
Doesn't look like design by committee to me, just shows lack of experience.
matt4077 8y ago
Even? If there's one crime against UI and design that stands far above the others, it's Java's GUI framework.
frou_dh 8y ago
Gotta say I love Duke even though I've never done Java. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Duke_%28Java_mascot%29_waving.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Duke_%28...

zapita 8y ago

"Rest easy, our beloved Gopher Mascot remains at the center of our brand" Then why is the mascot not featured in the post even once?

indescions_2018 8y ago

Can't resist a good design critique so here goes. My take echoes many of the gut first impressions expressed by others. Presumably the Go design team added the speed lines at the left to connote speed, performance, and and the future progress and adoption of the language. But the way the lines are conceived is generic. The variation of lengths, meant to evoke the chaotic air turbulence behind a rapidly accelerating race car, is tired. Nothing we haven't seen millions of times before. And not particularly well thought out. In direct contradiction to the expressive power and beauty of the language itself. The best thing about the design is of course the hidden encapsulation of the mathematical symbol for "infinity". Although, again I find myself at a loss to understand the exact nature of the relation. A possible reference to the ability to spawn millions of goroutines? The execution of the infinity symbol itself is muddled by the sharp corners of the G's aperture. Shouldn't it be more rounded? It's menacing resemblance to a PC-era on/off power symbol rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise is distracting. And lastly, the most troubling of all. Whither the beloved Gopher? A clear nod to the linux penguin. And a secret totem to those who have been initiated. A hieroglyph for the high priests. No text necessary. Make no doubt about what this rebranding portends. Enterprise Go, Team Edition coming soon ;)

tyrankh 8y ago
> A clear nod to the linux penguin. And a secret totem to those who have been initiated. A hieroglyph for the high priests. No text necessary. That's... looking into it quite a lot, isn't it? It seems like just a playful mascot.
- tomjakubowski 8y ago
  Yeah, if anything it's a nod to Plan 9's Glenda the bunny -- they're by the same artist, even!
andrenth 8y ago
> In direct contradiction to the expressive power and beauty of the language itself. Well Go doesn’t particularly excel in the expressiveness department, so in that sense I guess this new logo is fitting?

4ad 8y ago

Imagine how many external contributors could have been sponsored to work on Go for the money Google blew on this project.

UncleEntity 8y ago
How much does it cost to "refine" the Speed Racer logo?
- 4ad 8y ago
  Way more than you think. And now that I told you that, 10-50x more than you revised estimation.

mpfundstein 8y ago

this is so stupid ... a freaking brand book for a programming language. god damn :-) can we get more hipster? on the other hand, its also fun. maybe i should just complain less and enjoy the beautiful colors :D

adjagu 8y ago

Reminds me of the logo for GQ India. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/GQ_India_logo.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/GQ_India_logo...

shiado 8y ago

I know it is petty and irrational but I judge the quality of a software project by how boring it looks, where boringness is better. The more it looks like some university professor's web 0.1 hand-coded HTML project circa 1993 the better. Just look at this sexy boring website, it tells you that things are going to work perfectly with no bullshit or corporate-speak included. https://gcc.gnu.org/ https://gcc.gnu.org/

andrewmcwatters 8y ago
I don't think it's petty or irrational. It signals to me that there are more important things than selling decal stickers and t-shirts. It says we don't care about exposing this technology to the largest possible crowd and diluting what can be produced with it. I love C and Lua, and both are untrendy, long-lasting languages that don't attract particular crowds, and it means that when I produce something with them, unlike the trendier side of software development, it will actually last and run 5 years from now. I think branding like this is a double edged sword. It says, "We're trendy and attractive, but established," and at the same time it says, "We guarantee you're going to love our mascot plushies and the high quality $15 decal stickers you're going to slap on your $1,299 MacBook Pro that you just got back from the Apple Store over a stuck key repair."
rainbowmverse 8y ago
Compare to clang's website, which has the same aesthetic and is half as busy (visually): https://clang.llvm.org/ https://clang.llvm.org/
- iaabtpbtpnn 8y ago
  The logo for LLVM is a big silver dragon
fermienrico 8y ago
I totally agree, the more boring, the better. Like Berkshire Hathway's website [1]. This is especially true for things like investment firms and programming languages. The fact that they don't spend any ounce of time/resources on branding itself is a cool brand. They don't need it and they don't give a shit. Now, I do not endorse a complete neglect for cohesiveness and consistency. In the case of Go, it has an interesting interplay between sophistication and fun - this was a perfect opportunity to make an xkcd style cartoony brand that conveyed both simultaneously. Instead what we got is an infuriating bullshit that looks like one of those stock logo/branding templates I can buy for $19.95. Sigh. [1] http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

oseph 8y ago

This is so much better than that silly cartoon they had before. Sure it was cute and fun, but for a modern language it felt so ... childish. As someone who works professionally as an illustrator and dabbles with code, this is just my two cents, and whether you like or dislike a logo is 100% entirely subjective. This new logo/identity feels much more refreshing and importantly, professional. At least in my books. Next up, Java's atrocious coffee cup logo perhaps?

downer68 8y ago

Honest opinion: Yuck. Constructive feedback: I prefer the Gopher.

nukeop 8y ago

Go developers are busy making fancy (or rather, pretty generic and bland) logos and thinking about "brand identities", while developers who use other languages do actual work. Does a programming language really need a logo, a cartoony mascot, an entire "brand guide" pamphlet and a "visual identity"? RMS was right when he said that software industry is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. We see this when developers pick their tools not according to their functionality, but to what is trendy and looks cool at the moment.

notriddle 8y ago
I'm pretty sure that Google hires separate people to work on branding and programming.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

deevolution 8y ago

The gopher was what initally caught my attention. Cant believe they did away of that little dude.

tomc1985 8y ago

Why...the...fuck.... does a programming language need a branding team?????

andrewmcwatters 8y ago
To sell you shit, and sell you the appeal of using the language.

omarforgotpwd 8y ago

Whatever. Everyone hates new designs at first and then we get used to them. Go is cool and I think it could be a good thing that they're putting some work into making it look cool. It's good to have an awareness of your programming language among non-technical people and use branding to communicate qualities they can't pick up by actually using the language.

zokier 8y ago
> they're putting some work into making it look cool They might be trying to make it look cool, but what they have accomplished is to make it look corporate, which is pretty much diametrically opposite of cool.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  If you're going to pick a language based on what's "cool", you might not be golang's target user base anyway...
  - zokier 8y ago
    GP comments choice of words, not mine
- omarforgotpwd 8y ago
  Developers will use Go because if its technical aspects.Features like concurrency primitives that make go what it is. Nobody is going to ditch Go because they don't like the new branding. "Rewrite everything in Rust, the new logo sucks". The branding is for non technical people, like executives and other non-technical employees across the company. What they are trying to convey to these people is that there is something new, exciting, and better happening with Go -- something developers know, but others who don't understand technical details won't get. The other purpose is probably to highlight to Alphabet investors the investments Google is making in the Go programing language, and to try and make them understand how impactful that investment has been.

wscott 8y ago

I immediately thought of the book Go, Dog Go! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go,_Dog._Go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go,_Dog._Go! The old gopher wasn't serious either, but at least it was fun.

Fukkaudeku 8y ago

Ironically, it looks very generic.

paultopia 8y ago
DOH. I totally came here to make this very joke. You win, good gentleperson. You win.

21 8y ago

Reading the comments here makes it clear why most programmers should stay away from design. I've programmed for 20 years now, but that stupid gopher and the way it was everywhere was a serious put off for me on giving Go a look. Nerdy AF. Good riddance. I wonder if there was a huge internal battle between the brand savvy people which realized how terrible the gopher was, and the Go creators. Guys, don't be so stereotypical, expand your horizon outside of Pokemon and Star Wars esthetics. I'll put it in a more obvious form: a lot of you like Apple, can you imagine for a second that gopher on anything Apple? Downvotes away...

tripa 8y ago
Many years ago, I've had a project manager reluctant to have us commit to the Hadoop ecosystem because, come on, "Pig", "Zoo"[keeper]... this can't be serious! Sometimes people are the problem. Of course they're just names and have no incidence whatsoever on the relevance of a project. Until they do. For terrible reasons.
salgernon 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogcow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogcow OK, its old - but it certainly served the same purpose in branding "the priesthood" that lived and breathed the ecosystem. Less prevelent: see Hexley, Darwin's (unofficial) BSD-Devil Platypus mascot - http://www.hexley.com http://www.hexley.com
allenu 8y ago
I totally agree. I only started playing with Go a few months ago and remember how amateurish the website and the mascot made it look. It gave the impression that it was a work in progress and research project instead of something that's been around for 8 years and used professionally.
- zeveb 8y ago
  > I only started playing with Go a few months ago and remember how amateurish the website and the mascot made it look. If good, clean text which displays in any browser is amateurish … then I prefer amateurism to professionalism. I really appreciate that the Go website (appears to be) good, clean HTML.

tripa 8y ago

I love how the favicon's still a gopher.

sus_007 8y ago
Not for long I think, they probably will redesign their entire site too.

keyle 8y ago

Highly disappointing. They took the soul out of it, the gopher is not even included as part of the logo, like a wink in history. The Gopher IS GO! Its scruffy looks, small and mighty made it approachable and fun. This looks like they hired an external team of wan#&$%, pardon the term, but humour me for a second: the brand guide pdf: - ven diagram, check - big wanky words, check - big wanky opposite words, check - proxy terms that are samey to any brand they'd do, check This could have been delivered on April 1st.

stirner 8y ago
I checked the date to make sure this wasn't an old April Fools' joke. The new design language is minimalistic, but it's not simple, and doesn't reflect the programming language at all.

jasonmoo 8y ago

It looks like a ride-sharing service logo.

jweir 8y ago

This won't make the language any better. It will make the language more approachable for new comers. The Go website is _almost_ as bare bones as it gets. It functions fine and we are familiar with it. But compared to say Python, the site looks pretty amateur. If you were to judge a language by its website, I'd say Python looks better. The new branding can lead the way to a more put together presentation, and that could be good for the growth of the community.

superbaconman 8y ago
I don't care so much about the way a sight looks so long as it works well. Both the go and python sites work well for me, thus they're models in my mind for well documented languages.
bitmapbrother 8y ago
The logo is just the start. The website will also be refreshed. The website will be getting a refresh based on the new design. Since we are making significant changes, we are also taking this opportunity to update our website infrastructure to support internationalization and multilingual to better serve our global community. The migration will happen in stages over the next few months starting with this blog.
- everybodyknows 8y ago
  Go's online documentation is the best I've ever seen for a language. You can still hear Rob Pike's diction in the core functionality sections -- precise as a scalpel. Now a "design agency" has their claws into it. My own feelings are nausea, and fear.

rcdmd 8y ago

The "Go logo" has always been something like "-=GO"[1]. There's not much changing here, unless the announcement signals that they're going to start de-emphasizing the acquired-taste gopher. [1] See the black/white image halfway down the page-- https://blog.golang.org/gopher https://blog.golang.org/gopher

im_dario 8y ago
Spot on. It seems to me that everybody missed the point. The gopher won't go away (it appears in the official guide) but this new brand is just a modern evolution of the official logo which was eclipsed by the gopher.

mrmondo 8y ago

While I don't really 'care' about the logo of a programming language per se, this makes 'GO' look like a courier / delivery company to me, it also seems a little odd that both letters are the same case.

pier25 8y ago

It's ugly. Looks like a brand of sport shoes for 12 year olds. I think the brand for a programming language like Go should not look like a toy.

arnvald 8y ago
That was exactly my first thought. Just add 2 more letters and you have "GOAL", a new brand of soccer equipment for children.

smnplk 8y ago

Does not compute. Go is speed now and Rust is just, well rust ?

slezyr 8y ago
It's faster write programs in Go. But programs in Rust run faster.

smnplk 8y ago

Is Go a programing language that lands you a job the fastest these days ?

mortdeus 8y ago

why fix whats not broken? I like the plan 9/unix/KISS style? Like who seriously sat there and was like, this is something we need help with and was like we need outside help with this. The brand book is astonishingly horrible and is not an improvement on the way we are digesting the information.

wiremine 8y ago

Caveat: I'm a software developer who's worked in agencies for half of my 20 year career. A few thoughts: 1. Branding is hard: everybody things they can do it. Creative direction and art direction are really, really hard. If you haven't seen the "Make my logo bigger cream" video, go watch it, and then have some grace with the Go team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgcX0y1Nzhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgcX0y1Nzhs 2. A brand is WAY more than a logo. I get that's the first thing you grab, but the logo is just the identify of the brand. If you think it's all creative mumbo jumbo, I encourage you to go read Aaker's "Building Strong Brands" https://www.amazon.com/Building-Strong-Brands-David-Aaker/dp/002900151X https://www.amazon.com/Building-Strong-Brands-David-Aaker/dp... Go read the Brand Guide twice before you start throwing darts. https://storage.googleapis.com/golang-assets/go-brand-book-v1.0.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/golang-assets/go-brand-book-v... Having seen 100s of these over the years, this is excellent work from people who honestly care. It also addresses almost every single negative comment on this thread. I also like how they call out explicitely "The gopher is not a logo" which is entirely true. I think it's more of a "lovemark" (see https://www.amazon.com/Lovemarks-Kevin-Roberts/dp/157687270X https://www.amazon.com/Lovemarks-Kevin-Roberts/dp/157687270X) It's not my favorite logo, but it's definitely on brand. If the go team is reading this: it might help if you lead with the mark and the mascot together. I think the logo in isolation is what's generating the strong reaction.

kenshi 8y ago
Thanks for taking the time to post all those informative links. Usually these kinds of discussions end up being people expressing what they like or dislike about the re-brand. I'd suggest that a re-brand that didn't provoke a strong reaction was a waste of time.
rukuu001 8y ago
> A brand is WAY more than a logo. I thought it was super-interesting they used the word 'brand' instead of 'branding'. As if a brand ("what people say about you when you're not listening") could be conjured from a logo and set of colours.
carapace 8y ago
I see that "Brand Guide" as style over substance personified: > Roboto is a contemporary sans serif typeface designed for readability. That's an oxymoron: "sans serif typeface designed for readability". Thin sans serif body text is how you show you hate your reader's eyes. And they didn't even run a damn spell-checker over the thing: > For additional background and guideance (sic) (Points for using the correct word "typeface" in lieu of "font" tho. Are you watching Woz!?)

jehlakj 8y ago

Reminds me of a logo that was on a tv remote controller I used to have. Do they seriously think it’s witty to most people? All I see is a two letter word without any context or deeper implications. Okay, maybe the word is moving right. But that’s it.

KAdot 8y ago

Go™ Enterprise Edition.

bitmapbrother 8y ago

The new logo actually has its roots in the original logo designed by Renee French. https://blog.golang.org/gopher/logo.png https://blog.golang.org/gopher/logo.png Rene French also suggested they use the Gopher, he originally designed for a radio station promotion, as the mascot for the language.

rn2dy2018 8y ago

bad move, Go team!

rn2dy2018 8y ago

1. Go already has a brand and logo recognized by everyone. 2. Go is a programming language, not a brand, I as a developer don't really care what the brand look like. So, to the community and the GO team: please don't make this a big deal!

deleted 8y ago

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shirro 8y ago

Looks like a courier company. Very bland and corporate looking which I guess is the focus of Go as a language. It am a mediocre programmer so I really like Go, it is my main language, but it is an uninspiring language by design. This logo looks aimed at suits and not the Go community. That might not be a bad thing for Go jobs and for Google. Open source communities often have puns in naming or plushy worthy logos and just generally playfulness which I don't see in this logo.

pwaivers 8y ago
Reminds me of the playful acronym for PHP, which is "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor".

miguelmota 8y ago

At first glance I disliked it, but after a second look at it I think it's quite nice. It's bold, clean, and simple. People are generally resistant to change but it's something they'll become accustomed to fairly quick. Glad to know they kept the little guy gopher mascot.

newscracker 8y ago

Logo design and acceptance (by the ones commissioning it) is a strange thing, in my experience. This new logo looks like a gas/fuel station logo or a racing logo. I can't imagine it being dissociated with these categories. The older gopher one, though kinda whimsical, was nicer, cuter and amenable to be modified to indicate different things in different contexts. This new logo is static and is the opposite of the old one in many ways. New logo designs, of things that have been around for sometime, invite derision and ridicule (and for good measure). Getting used to such decisions will take time.

PinkMilkshake 8y ago
Ha! Gas station was the first thing that came to my mind, then car rental company.

misrab 8y ago

Noooooooooooooooooo!!!! gophers 4eva, I refuse the new logo.

tentakull 8y ago

This is interesting to me. I have more than a peripheral interest in art and design, but my day job is heavy systems programming using Go/Scala and the like. I think there is a huge market advantage to correctly branding stuff developers use. For me this is, excuse the hyperbole, almost objectively a terrible rebranding of Go. The Gopher, while not currently wholely representative of what Go has become...is iconic and a lovely homage to the playfulness and irreverency of hacker culture. What an opportunity to update and infuse the brand with how the language has developed. I love what other people are doing with the gopher (like the the dep packager). On top of this, I can't get over the fact that the design team can't draw. What? How much are you guys getting paid?

darren0 8y ago

This is really the wrong move. Really sucks the personality out of go. I felt the old brand clearly highlighted the important thing is, and where the most time is spent, is the code

gehwartzen 8y ago

I may be in the rare (for this site) situation of never having heard of of GO (I'm not a programmer) when I clicked the link and my first impression was that this was rebranding for some food delivery service.

prawn 8y ago
I thought "courier" immediately. I think it's clean and effective, but I don't have any interest/care for the language and don't recall ever having seen its gopher or whatever represented it before. I can appreciate that those who have would have a stronger and different reaction.

thefounder 8y ago

I like the old brand better... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Golang.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Golang.p...

infonull 8y ago

Bland and forgettable. The gopher mascot was embraced by the community. It's a programming language... the need for a "corporate brand treatment" should be mocked.

aaronang 8y ago

It looks like the Gopher mascot will still be on the (possible) new frontpage http://within.us/google-go/ http://within.us/google-go/.

sudhirj 8y ago

It's really sad and insulting to the language itself to do this - while there's nothing wrong with the design assets and guidelines, this looks like it was a template bought for $29.99 off a design website. The problem is that the design has no connection or correlation at all with what the design is for. The difference is superbly obvious in the slide masters - look at the code samples - that code looks like it has absolutely no place on a slide like that. That's true of the entire design language - it's great for a startup trying to be cool, but has nothing to do with Go. It's like what we'd get if we asked one of our designer interns to come with a brand language and the only brief they were given is "It's called Go, and this mascot is non-negotiable".

pjmlp 8y ago

Man, even I prefer that cute little gopher to this new branding. Better spend money improving the real issues of the language, instead of paying to agencies for this outcome.

deltron3030 8y ago

I don't like the big thin typeface in those materials, too snobby. The logo itself is OK, they should have used a bold font like that, and maybe just use the outlines to represent the lightweightness visually.

MilQ 8y ago

Only I think that new logo looks like New Balance logo? http://www.freelogovectors.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/new-balance-logo.jpg http://www.freelogovectors.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ne... This lines and italic font.

PinkMilkshake 8y ago

I guess ya'll should just switch to erlang then with it's negative space internet explorer logo.

spludge 8y ago

The gopher was never the logo. From the brand book: > "The gopher is not a logo" The gopher stays on as go's mascot. The brand book even has a page on how to draw it!

jatins 8y ago

There's only one purpose of good brand identity and that's to be remembered. I don't see how this is more memorable than the beloved Gopher. Edit: Gopher is still the official mascot, though. So that's good.

kalleboo 8y ago

Perhaps this new brand was just a psychological experiment to see how easy it is to bait Hacker News into a 200+ comment thread on bikeshedding?

cerberusss 8y ago
I see you're being downvoted but this whole topic indeed is just that, bikeshedding.

baby 8y ago

Wow. This is bad. It looks like a tire or automotive company logo for some reason. It seems like someone with no real design intuition was in charge of picking the final logo. Why not make several ones and ask the community for their favorite one?

fnwx17 8y ago

the logo is pretty forgettable, but on the bright side - at page 24 of the PDF they announced that Go 2.0 will have generics

auxten 8y ago

http://gopher.gg/ http://gopher.gg/

gaius 8y ago

Once the marketing types take over its the beginning of the end.

lambda021 8y ago

Gopher is a fork of Go, but keeps the cute Gopher logo FOREVER. ;) LONG LIVE GOPHER! Our homepage: http://gopher.gg http://gopher.gg

auxten 8y ago
that's cool! apply for gopher maintainer

sarabande 8y ago

- Who is responsible for such rebrandings? Does the Google marketing team decide one day that the Go language needs a new identity, or was this a request by the language designers? - Does a rebranding need approval from the language designers?

holografix 8y ago

#NotMyLogo

hawski 8y ago

The Gopher took a nice cozy corporate job and is sitting now in a cubicle. He wears a suit and a tie instead of Hawaiian shirt. It's a serious business now.

sargas 8y ago

This new logo looks sterile and boring, creativity-wise. It isn't clever neither. I'm excited for the official website redesign, however. It needs it.

kentt 8y ago

I'm so glad I don't have to sit through design presentations anymore. Just reading the first few words of the "Brand Book" made me die inside.

hajderr 8y ago

So you're a racing company?

ArchieT 8y ago

One thing about this new branding is that I have never ever seen Go spelled with all caps (GO). Most only see it as either "Go" or "go". Spelling it with all caps ("GO") makes it look like a single shapeless typographic slab. "Go" is found in text, and "go" is found in code, cmd and everything related. In the original the letters were thinner, and that could have made it feel more lightweight, so it wasn't that bad.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

gamw_mana_sou 8y ago

Judging from the palette, it looks to me that they're getting the language prepared for Android or more possibly Fuchsia. I'm eager to see how they're going to replace Java little-by-little.

gumpyoung 8y ago

The "new" logo looks even worse than TNT or UPS... Should we start a petition on Change.org to stop this happening??